Recent developments in sensory technologies that enable measurement of various physiological characteristics of a person or an animal have enabled, together with advances on wireless communication technologies, healthcare solutions for personal use where a monitoring device is arranged to monitor at least one vital sign of the person or the animal and to transfer the obtained measurement data to a database stored in a remote server via a wireless link to enable remote tracking and/or subsequent analysis of the measured vital signs e.g. for medical purposes. Examples of vital signs monitored by a mobile monitoring device include body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation level.
While mobile (and non-mobile) monitoring devices have traditionally found use as part of medical treatment in professional domain e.g. in a hospital environment, mobile monitoring devices are becoming increasingly popular in monitoring of vital signs of people also outside the professional medical domain. Typical examples of such semi-professional or non-professional use include monitoring of one or more vital signs of a person who suffers from a long-term medical condition or one or more vital signs of an elderly person in general in home environment, monitoring of one or more vital signs of a person who is working in a hazardous environment, monitoring of one or more vital signs of an athlete under excessive physical stress, etc.
A mobile monitoring device necessarily relies on a power supply that is provided as part of the device or that is otherwise carried together with the mobile monitoring device by a person whose vital signs are being monitored using the device. Typically, the power supply comprises a battery installed in or connected to the mobile monitoring device. In many use cases, especially those that fall outside the typically well-controlled professional medical domain, energy-efficient operation of the mobile monitoring device plays an important role in ensuring reliable operation and convenient use of the monitoring device via avoidance of frequent replacement/recharging of the power supply and/or even complete drainage of the power supply.